good day today... was on a summer studio review at upenn this morning with fellow archinector AP... then had lunch with AP, his better half MK, and other friends... then spent this evening working out some ideas for a mountain house... followed by hanging out with some neighbors on the stoop/sidewalk whilst drinking some bourbon/ginger ales on a beautifully mild summer night in philadelphia...

Philip, what matters is if there is a citation for the population statement, not that they are saying so... In the world of scholarly sustainability papers, that 50% urbanized is significant and is posited at the start of most articles (and will be until we get to 55%% or 60%...) Why so many known facts have to be regurgitated escapes me, but it's just part of the genre.

well it means all the problems we are taking on now as planners architects and researchers will be almost exclusively issues of urbanism, and that means we are qualified to talk about them. We weren't before. When poverty was rural it was not something we could talk about. Now with years of forced villagization (like zimbabwe) and city of slums and so on all that we know as designers is important to the way the current and future world works.

Jencks said architects are irrelevant. this says maybe not so much. so we keep repeating it. it's probably a matter of shock.

feel like we're waking up from a strange dream weekend without power. have to retrieve the freezer/refrigerator items from my brother's house, can finally clean out the basement which took on water, and can mow the overgrown lawn. BUT it was a fun weekend! beautiful cool fall weather, family meals out, lots of reading and drawing, and a movie with friends! if we could schedule these outages so we could be prepared, they may not be so bad. wonder if our power bill will be 1/30 less.

Oh no, Steven, what happened? I haven't had hot water or central air in over a month (since my basement flooded) I'm on the tortoise path to getting both fixed, but I really just can't afford it right now. I am excited to see if my utility bills reflect living in the dark ages.

wow steven. that's intense. glad you were able to enjoy the power outage. i have this felling lately it might not be always necessary to be plugged in and using power quite as much as we do. planned outages may be enough to remove the need for more power plants even.

Donna, that's crazy! Are the the 'craftsman' standing off by yourself while the others are conferencing?

Jump, I thought of you last night. Abe chose a book from the library about a girl who lives in Japan, but is half American. Her grandmother "Gram" from Maine comes to visit and she and Baachann and the girl go to the sea to collect Wakame. I'm sure I butchered the Japanese words in the book, but daijobu. The book was called "The Wakame Gatherers." It was a bit long and detailed on the process of gathering wakame for a 3 year old, though.

That is completely awesome Donna. I shared it with a co-worker and he was very impressed as well. Just out of curiosity, how expensive is it to harvest a tree that size and move it to an off-site location. Can't wait to see the final product. Keep the photos coming. Rock star indeed. I am constantly amazed by the amount of brilliance and beauty that my fellow archintectors design and work towards. Glad to be graced by it. Hopefully some of it will rub off onto me some day soon.

Could someone please reassure me that the beige that bisque color I had to use to substitute the other that I'm not sure exists any longer is close enough for posterity sake. In other words no mormal person is going to tell that one has more orange in it than the other, especially considering they've never seen the original selection. Having a high color accuity sucks from time to time.

I'm just an uber perfectionist. The preferred color goes better with the other finishes. The other one is just slightly muddier but isn't noticeable by anyone but me and another co-worker who suffers the same affliction.

hey - any of you NYC people know what's up with the new NYCECC? any small renovations/alterations that require a permit are no longer exempt? plus building owners are required to submit energy reports every 10 years? has a cottage industry sprung up yet?

Thanks. I'm the local architect because I'm very friendly with the Indianapolis Museum of Art curators - benefit of having an artist husband - and when the Swedish architects came to town last winter I volunteered to show them around town and hosted a dinner party at our house for them.

The IMA is fucking amazing - they are doing such incredible stuff lately, not *only* my husband's first major solo museum show (which opens 8 September, Steven!) but hosting the Miller House symposium, opening the 100 Acres sculpture park (where the Chop Stick will be located), and winning the commission of the American pavilion at the Biennale this year (which is why we went to Venice in June). It's the most forward thinking general art museum in the country, in my honest opinion, due to the visionary director Max Anderson and the amazing contemporary and design curators. They don't even blink when something as nutty as Chop Stick is proposed - they just set about making it happen!

that whole post is all very coolio donna. and here i was under the impression america was mostly composed of people who go to the creation museum and homeschool their kids so they won't ever be exposed to blue people with icecream selling houses.

but there are a few here and there who attempt to undermine those protective types, tricking them into thinking differently by luring them with the temptation of fun. it sometimes works, at least until those folks go back to their mega-church on sunday and their charismatic leader hits the reset button.